It’s a long road up ahead of us, let’s forge on while we’re strong and leave our mark of honor once again (The Tudors, 2007-2010 ; Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, 2012 ; War of the Roses, 2012)

Seems to me that each few years after a great series was on TV, you almost always get video games that put you in the same ambiance. The Tudors was great: lot of violence and sex, stimulating enough, and depicting IMHO convincingly a the specific period of Henri VIII’s troubled reign. This short period is of obviously major importance in Europe, at the origin of anglicanism for fuck/god sake, and so was portrayed in many great books, most notably the well documented Christopher J. Sansom’s series of Matthew Shardlake crime novels-this guy makes good use of his PhD, read it! Same kind of moral issues you could also find in Jean Anouilh’s Becket ou l’honneur de Dieu, even though this one is about Henri II instead.

So it’s not a big surprise to get to Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. Maybe it’s unrelated. True, Henri VIII isn’t actually medieval but modern instead. However, available weapons and kind of fortress and town you’re visiting are very late medieval than anything else. And after all it started as a free as in beer mod to HL²/Source engine (which I think I even tried years before that), even though now the game uses Unreal3 engine. As such, the game is quite acceptable eye-candy wise. Maps are okay, weapons are hard to master but interesting too. But then I gave a try to War of the Roses. The ambiance is quite the same, taking place in the XVth century. Its engine is a specific one and could probably be improved a lot, especially performance wise in general and bugfixing in specific (for instance, you frequently have the music stopping/stuttering when navigating in the menus: don’t tell me the same thread is handling the visual interface AND the music output. Who would do such crap in 2012?). But the gameplay is way more fun than Chivalry one. More big melee fighting, easier interface, more interaction with other players (you can bandage harmed friendlies, etc) and such interaction rewarded with a XP plus Money system. You can customize a lot your classes to fit your playing style. Pretty pretty good.

So far, the only issue I noticed in WotR is with the duel servers – usually on the map called tournament. You should avoid them. Most of the time, players won’t really duel but will claim too. You’ll just get kicked in the arse at the very moment you defeated regularly your opponent. And you may even find yourselves against XP/Money whores that will play together in the opposite team, getting on you when you’re down, the first one (from your team) reviving you, getting XP/Money for that, and the second one killing you the second your up, getting XP/Money for that too, endlessly until you quit. But it’s easy to avoid this: play conquest. That’s funnier in all regards. With swords drawn to defend stood these noblehearted men, faugh-an-ballagh clear the way me boys